Sinful Love (Sinful Nights #4)(16)
Becky’s shoulders rose as she inhaled deeply. “Ever since the investigation…” she began, then trailed off. “I shouldn’t say anything. I can’t say anything.”
Annalise squeezed her hand. “I understand.”
Clearly, Becky had said all she was able to say. Annalise reached for the sugar, poured some into her coffee, and shifted gears. “So…is the big cruise still happening after Sanders retires?”
“I hope so,” Becky said, twisting her index and middle fingers together. “Fingers are crossed it doesn’t get put off.”
As they talked more about little things, the wheels in Annalise’s head started to turn, and she wondered what would defer Sanders’s retirement, and why Becky was so tense from the investigation. What on earth would they have to be worried about from an inquiry into an incident that happened eighteen years ago? Sanders was Thomas’s best friend back then. They’d worked together.
The wheels picked up speed. Wait a second. Did Sanders know something? Was he talking to the cops?
Her heart squeezed.
Oh.
The appointment.
Was it over the case? Did Sanders have something to hide? Did Becky? As the possibilities took shape, she cycled back eighteen years ago to a night when she’d slipped into the house late, lips bee-stung and bruised, hair a wild tumble, heart racing from being with Michael. Becky had been reading, waiting up for her, and they’d talked briefly in the living room.
“So, the young Michael Paige-Prince. You sure do like him. Is it serious?”
Annalise had nodded with a grin she couldn’t contain. “How do you say it? I am crazy for him.”
“Yes, that’s how we say it here. And I can see why. Smart, kind, and a handsome young man.”
“He is,” Annalise had echoed, feeling dreamy, the way she always felt when she thought of the boy she was falling in love with.
Becky had smiled dopily. “He gets his good looks from his father.”
At age sixteen, she’d barely registered the comment.
Now, years later, she lingered on the remark. He gets his good looks from his father. Surely that was nothing, right? There had been no secret affair between Becky and Thomas, no long-simmering desire? It was just a comment, wasn’t it? Hell, Annalise herself could tell at that age that Michael was “like father, like son” in the looks department. And she didn’t have any weird daddy issues or attraction to her boyfriend’s father, but empirically, Becky was right. Michael was handsome, and so was his father. That was all. Case closed.
Annalise quieted her skeptical side, telling herself that Becky’s comments from years ago couldn’t possibly have anything to do with her odd behavior today.
As Annalise said her good-bye at the end of the meal and slid into the backseat of a Nissan, her Uber ride waiting to whisk her to her shoot, she replayed last night.
The bar, the kiss, Michael’s hands. His mouth, teeth, tongue.
His name on her lips.
Her fingers between her legs.
Hot sparks rained down on her, and she shivered. She’d be seeing him this afternoon. The first man she’d ever loved, back when she hardly knew what that butterfly feeling was in her chest—flutters, wings and all.
First love was like that. Enchanting and light, stitched from an endless thread of hopes and dreams. It made you feel invincible and hungry for more all at once. She’d wanted to be with Michael so much when she returned to France. She’d tried so hard to fight the distance through letters. They’d attempted to stay together through the end of high school and on into college.
But just like proximity breeds closeness, distance kills it. Too many days apart, weeks alone, and years gone by. Paper and ink couldn’t feed their hungry hearts. Eventually, their love became unsustainable. Stretched too far, it collapsed under the weight.
They drifted apart after the first year of college. Even then, she’d clung to the distant possibility that someday, somehow they’d meet again. Hope powered her even in the years when they no longer talked. She took a job as a waitress at a local café during school, saving all her euros, thinking they’d fund a return trip to the United States. Like a piggybank for rekindled love.
But by the time she’d have been able to use them, she and her high school sweetheart had faded to memories. The fondest ones to be sure, and she’d kept a book of photographs of their days together, a record of her young love.
Besides, the euros had gone to something else.
She’d had to move on. He’d moved on too.
Annalise graduated from university, hunted for jobs across Europe, and eventually landed the gig of her dreams as a photojournalist. There she met Julien, a rival photographer, soon her lover, then her fiancé.
That was what Julien was the time she’d seen Michael ten years ago. He’d just sent her the most beautiful and heartbreaking love letter, and it had ripped her apart knowing she couldn’t respond in kind. Mere days after receiving it, chance had ushered her to the airport in Marseilles on a job, and she’d run into him on a layover. He’d just moved to Europe and was stationed there for his work in army intelligence. It was unexpected and God, the sight of him, a man then, had punched her in the chest. She was in love with Julien, but guilt still gnawed at her when Michael’s eyes traveled down her body and landed on her hand. Her engagement ring.